Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:05:09 UTC
I am an admin in the English Wikipedia. Sometimes an English Wikipedia page which tries to transclude a template which does not exist, is treated as if it was in one of the to-be-speedy-deleted categories, and appears in the to-be-speedy-deleted list, although it contains no {{db-...}} tag. If I create the non-existent template as {{}} (i.e. a dummy template), the affected page no longer appears in the to-be-speedy-deleted list.
Example?
On 13 May 2007 I was going through the to-be-speedy-deleted lists. The list (catalog) for db-author contained several files in a user's filespace. Those files did not have a speedy-delete tag, but they were allegedly in [[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user]]. I looked at one of them in edit mode. The list of transcluded templates at the end included two red names, for nonexistent templates: one of them was [[User:The Haunted Angel/General Userboxes]]. I created those two templates as dummy templates {{}} . I refreshed the display of [[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user]], and those spuriously listed files went away. Later that day I found that [[User:The Haunted Angel/General Userboxes]] had existed before and shortly before this someone deleted it "CSD G7: Author Requests Deletion", although it did not contain a speedy-delete tag. I have had similar cases before. That is why, when I delete a speedied page, I always read it to check that it does contain a speedy-delete tag.
Please give a repeatable set of instructions to duplicate this behavoir.
I do not know that it is reliably repeatable. It "happens sometimes". OK, I know, intermittent faults are a nuisance. But it happens sometimes.
It seems to happen when a file tries to transclude a template which has been recently deleted.
A way to duplicate this behaviour (although it's a intermittent trouble, so this way doesn't work every time) is: *Create a page A *Create a page B (for example a template, or a subpage) *Edit page A and transclude page B in it. *Edit page B and add (transclude) the template (let's call it C) that request speedy-deleting. (without noinclude instuction) *As template C add a <includeonly>[[Category:X]]</includeonly> instuction, both A and B pages are showed in the category:X page (which lists all the page marked for speedy-deleting. *Delete the B page. *Now the A page may be still listed in the category:X page (may = it's a intermittent trouble) *If you look at the A page, there is no category:X sign at the botton. *Page A will goes away from category:X after an indeterminate time. Further information: *the time of "phantom" staying in Category:X is inteterminate. Pages go out without a "First in, first out" way: (In a test of our, a page B-2 was delteted some hours after the deletion of B-1. A-2 (related to B-2) went out after less than 1 hour, but A-1 (related to B-1) were still there!!) *I have not checked if the trouble may sometime happends if template C is transcluded in B page with a noinclude. We can test it, if you think that this could be usefull. *I can rememember some trouble like this some time ago (even months and months, I think) , but it looks like that these troubles have become more frequent in the last week). *Tests done on it.wikpedia.org
This is to be expected when you mark templates as speedy.
